


Feeding the Shadows

by EriksChampion



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EriksChampion/pseuds/EriksChampion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was lost. But he had been lost for quite some time. Since that silver-haired moron had thrust himself across his path. He had been completely pulled apart—had vanished into a maelstrom of blazing darkness that made him feel that he was hovering on the brink of death just as he was beginning to come alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeding the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariasune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariasune/gifts).



The top of the world was a very lonely place to be. The night had fallen fast: the color had drained from the sky, the warmth stripped off the Earth, and the wind had picked up.

Malik grit his teeth and scowled, struggling to remain steady.

Bakura snickered from across the field. “Having trouble keeping your balance?”

“Hardly.”

“Or perhaps you’re losing your grip completely?”

“Shut up!” Malik growled. “And quit stalling.”

Bakura’s gaze lowered to the cards in his hand. From a distance, it looked like they were closed. How could he be so serene? “I was simply curious to see how long it would take you to fall.”

The response shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did. Nonetheless, Malik could feel his veins constrict, his heart rate increase. His gaze darted down to the jagged city lights blazing below and he shivered. The shadows had already begun to seep in, dissolving his soul into ice and darkness. And Bakura never seemed to stop smirking.  
“I thought you would appreciate the delay, seeing as how you’re not long for this world.” His knife-blade smile. His hemorrhaging thunder and twilight voice.

“Don’t underestimate me!” Malik snapped. He glared down at his cards—but it was hopeless. All he could see was Bakura’s cool, metallic laughter rushing over him like a river of wicked and degenerate thoughts that all seemed to run and rage together.

Who—exactly—had infiltrated who?

“Don’t worry, I see you for exactly what you are.”

Malik started.

He had always had violent dreams—the kind that wrenched him out of sleep, sweating and heaving, certain that he was being spied on, stalked—enslaved. It was in these dark and turbid moments that he had met his other self—embraced that thirsty, desperate yearning for violence and retribution. It seemed appropriate now: he had been born from shadow, and now, soon, those same shadows would pick him apart and hand him over to the man standing across the duel arena. And he couldn’t bring himself to fear it.

“Oh really? And so what am I?”

“In far over your head.”

“What?!” He stamped his foot. “I have borne the sacred scriptures on my back my entire life, and you dare to tell me—”

“When you took possession of the Millennium Rod, did you even know what it was capable of?”

“Of course! My family—”

“Your family.” Bakura scoffed. “No one in your family ever taught you how to control its power.”

“I taught myself.”

“Well, you haven’t done a very good job.”

“What do you mean?”

“The true ruler of the Millennium Rod would have no trouble defeating me.”

“Shut up!” Malik spat. “I haven’t lost yet!”

“Yes. Yet.”

The clouds surrounding him were becoming thicker. Suffocating. Malik could no longer feel where his feet were supposed to touch the ground. And now, with his vision partially obscured, he could have been soaring through the night sky—or plummeting down the deepest ravine.

He felt like he had gone days without food or water, but really it had been a lifetime. A lifetime deprived of sunlight. A lifetime spent feeding off of steaming scraps like a grizzled vulture.

What had kept him alive for so many years? What had he subsisted on beside the meager subsistence provided by the flame of his own rancorous thoughts?  
And that fire was being extinguished—was being decimated by a deluge of something far more violent and dangerous…

Malik shut his eyes and clenched his fists. It wasn’t supposed to end like this…

“You really thought I would stay on your side, didn’t you?” Bakura sneered. And laughed. He was enjoying this too much. “Well, I might have—if you hadn’t gone and gotten yourself in the way.”

Hadn’t they wanted the same thing—back, squinting in the glare at Domino pier, sealing their fate in blood and watching it sink to the bottom of the ocean, reveling in their shared scars? That felt so long ago now—the product of a time that was disfigured and destroyed. And the memory—the traces of it that remained—was destroying him now.  
And the hate that had tied them together was no longer enough. What bound them to each other now Malik wasn’t sure, but it felt like a noose cinched around his neck and a cold gust of wind sweeping him off the face of the Earth.

And it was stronger than hate. Malik had never imagined that anything could be.

“Well,” Bakura growled, “are you just going to stand there?”

Was he even standing anymore? He couldn’t feel his legs. He was certain that the only parts of him left were the hands that clutched his cards and his racing, treacherous heart.

Bakura continued his mockery. “Where is your strength now? What about your mission?”

They floated through billows of ash, out of reach of even the moonlight.

“Surrender now—you have no chance. Why prolong your humiliation?”

He was lost. But he had been lost for quite some time. Since that silver-haired moron had thrust himself across his path. He had been completely pulled apart—had vanished into a maelstrom of blazing darkness that made him feel that he was hovering on the brink of death just as he was beginning to come alive.

If there was a hell it was in the space between his lips. But Malik had always been a creature of the underworld, and hell was longed to be.


End file.
